U.S. Senate candidate Kennedy: Heck of a lot closer to an average person’

Friday

Dec 18, 2009 at 12:01 AMDec 18, 2009 at 6:20 PM

“Somebody has do it. If I didn’t do it, we’d be stuck with a government that would increase spending. Both candidates are pro-spending, both candidates are pro-health care in some kind of government-run (form),” said Joseph L. Kennedy during a meeting with GateHouse editors on Thursday.

John Hilliard

Libertarian candidate Joseph Lewis Kennedy — no relation to the famed political clan —says he offers a fiscally conservative, socially accepting alternative to the two major party candidates vying for the state’s vacant Senate seat.

“Somebody has do it. If I didn’t do it, we’d be stuck with a government that would increase spending. Both candidates are pro-spending, both candidates are pro-health care in some kind of government-run (form),” said Kennedy during a meeting with GateHouse editors on Thursday.

Kennedy, 38, is currently vice president of architecture & user experience at the financial giant State Street in Boston. He said his work experience includes managing staff in the U.S., China, India and Europe, and that he knows how to build an efficient office, which he can apply to government.

According to his campaign website, the Dedham resident was born in Boston to a Puerto Rican mother and Portuguese father, then given up for adoption, and raised by the senior minister of Trinity Lutheran Church in Worcester. He graduated with a computer science degree from Clark University, his site says.

Kennedy is running against Attorney General Martha Coakley, a Democrat residing in Medford, and Republican State Senator Scott Brown of Wrentham. The special election is set for Jan. 19.

Kennedy has raised about $11,000 and has about 170 volunteers with varying degrees of involvement in his campaign, he said.

“I’m an ordinary person. I sit in a cube... any single day of the week, my boss can come into my office and he can fire me,” said Kennedy, who drew a contrast with his two main rivals.

“When you talk about the average person, I’m a heck of a lot closer to an average person than an attorney general or state senator,” said Kennedy, who said he’d serve for only two terms if elected.

Kennedy said he’d work to reduce taxes, earmarks and spending as ways to free up more money here in Massachusetts. He said the state is a “loser” when it comes to federal aid: He said the Bay State gets 80 cents back on every dollar collected by the federal government.
“The priority I have in going into government is to eliminate as much pork as there is from the entire the system,” said Kennedy.

Though a Libertarian, Kennedy said he’d caucus with the Republicans if elected to the Senate.
He opposes a federally-backed health insurance plan, calling it “inappropriate and irresponsible” to expand coverage before costs are reduced. He supported tort reform, eliminating the anti-trust exemption for insurance companies and other steps to reduce the expense of medical care.

“The big issue is neither the Massachusetts legislature or the federal government has taken the time, in any way shape or form, to address cost (for health care),” he said.

He called Social Security a “Ponzi scheme,” because there’s no money budgeted for it, other than what’s paid into the system. He supported an increase in the retirement age and the option for people to drop out of the system to privately fund their own retirements, he said.
“You have to give people the opportunity to be responsible” for themselves, said Kennedy.

He said people who need medical care can go to an emergency room, and prohibitive emergency room bills for the uninsured can be reduced by addressing medical costs. Tax cuts would also allow for more support to charitable organizations that would offer aid.

“People neglect that. People ignore the fact that these people are cared for” via emergency room care, he said.

Kennedy called himself a “pro-peace guy,” and would pull back most troops from Afghanistan and Iraq, and focus on Pakistan, he said.

“We can’t be all over the world being the police,” he said.

Kennedy said that efforts to cap carbon dioxide emissions don’t affect other contributors to global warming, such as water vapor and methane, he said. He’s concerned about published reports that some of the data supporting the extent of global warming has been falsified by some climate researchers.

“What we’re putting into place... doesn’t address or cap it, all it does is tax it,” said Kennedy of carbon emission reductions.

The candidate said he wouldn’t have run if former Congressman Joseph P. Kennedy chose to run for Senate because their similar names could confuse voters. The Libertarian Kennedy also said his father is friends with the Kennedy family, and didn’t want to upset that relationship in case the former congressman ran a campaign.

It’s unclear what level of support Massachusetts voters have for a Libertarian senatorial candidate.

In 2002, Libertarian Michael Cloud collected 369,807 votes against Sen. John Kerry, but Libertarians didn’t mount a campaign against Sen. Ted Kennedy four years later. The last Libertarian candidate to run for senate — Robert J. Underwood of Springfield — earned 93,713 votes in 2008 against Sen. John Kerry. By comparison, Republican challenger Jeff Beatty collected 926,044 votes that year.

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